GROSS GODS AND ICKY ATHEISM: DISGUST RESPONSES TO ...

3.4 Discussion Study 2

3.4 Discussion Study 2 replicated the effect of Study 1—the second drink was rated to be more disgusting after contact with a rejected religious text, particularly for highly religious participants (i.e., those who value their religion as an important part of their identity). Study 2 also extended the results of Study 1 by demonstrating that the disgust response could be removed with hand washing. This finding is consistent with previous research on the link between physical cleanliness and moral purity, suggesting that hand-washing reduced feelings of moral impurity (i.e., disgust) after contact with the rejected religious passage. Further, the inverse effect was found among participants writing a passage from the Bible: Christians writing a passage from the Bible rated the second drink as less disgusting if they did not wash hands, but more disgusting if they did wash their hands. Recall that hand washing in Schnall et al.’s (2008) study caused participants to become less sensitive to violations of moral purity after watching a disgusting video (i.e., a feeling of moral impurity had been removed through physical cleansing). In the present research, hand washing after writing a passage from the Bible appears to have caused participants to become more sensitive to purity violations (i.e., a feeling of moral purity was removed through physical cleansing). These results thus provide initial evidence that physical cleansing can symbolically remove both negative and positive contagion. The implications of these findings are discussed in more detail below. 19